Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiSome Strategists Cast Doubt on Afghan War Rationale
WASHINGTON - The argument for deeper U.S. military commitment to the Afghan War invoked by President Barack Obama in his first major policy statement on Afghanistan and Pakistan Friday - that al Qaeda must be denied a safe haven in Afghanistan - has been not been subjected to public debate in Washington.
![[US soldiers patrol the Spira mountains in Khost province, Afghanistan. Afghanistan welcomed Friday a revised US strategy to fight extremism as authorities announced they had killed 18 insurgents and an Afghan troop killed two foreign soldiers for unknown reasons.(AFP/File/David Furst)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/afghanistan-1_1.jpg "afghanistan-1.jpg")
A few influential strategists here have been arguing, however, that this official rationale misstates the al Qaeda problem and ignores the serious risk that an escalating U.S. war poses to Pakistan.
Those strategists doubt that al Qaeda would seek to move into Afghanistan as long as they are ensconced in Pakistan and argue that escalating U.S. drone airstrikes or Special Operations raids on Taliban targets in Pakistan will actually strengthen radical jihadi groups in the country and weaken the Pakistani government's ability to resist them.
The first military strategist to go on record with such a dissenting view on Afghanistan and Pakistan was Col. T. X. Hammes, a retired Marine officer and author of the 2004 book "The Sling and the Stone", which argued that the U.S. military faces a new type of warfare which it would continue to lose if it did not radically reorient its thinking. He became more widely known as one of the first military officers to call in September 2006 for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation over failures in Iraq.
Col. Hammes dissected the rationale for the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in an article last September on the website of the "Small Wars Journal", which specialises in counterinsurgency issues. He questioned the argument that Afghanistan had to be stabilised in order to deny al Qaeda a terrorist base there, because, "Unfortunately, al Qaeda has moved its forces and its bases into Pakistan."
Hammes suggested that the Afghan War might actually undermine the tenuous stability of a Pakistani regime, thus making the al Qaeda threat far more serious. He complained that "neither candidate has even commented on how our actions [in Afghanistan] may be feeding Pakistan's instability."
Hammes, who has since joined the Institute for Defence Analysis, a Pentagon contractor, declined to comment on the Obama administration's rationale for the Afghan War for this article.
Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, has also expressed doubt about the official argument for escalation in Afghanistan. Pollack's 2002 book, "The Threatening Storm," was important in persuading opinion-makers in Washington to support the Bush administration's use of U.S. military force against the Saddam Hussein regime, and he remains an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. military presence in Iraq.
But at a Brookings forum Dec. 16, Pollack expressed serious doubts about the strategic rationale for committing the U.S. military to Afghanistan. Contrasting the case for war in Afghanistan with the one for war in Iraq in 2003, he said, it is "much harder to see the tie between Afghanistan and our vital interests."
Like Hammes, Pollack argued that it is Pakistan, where al Qaeda's leadership has flourished since being ejected from Afghanistan, which could clearly affect those vital interests. And additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Pollack pointed out, "are not going to solve the problems of Pakistan."
Responding to a question about the possibility of U.S. attacks against Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan paralleling the U.S. efforts during the Vietnam War to clean out the Communist "sanctuaries" in Cambodia, Pollack expressed concern about that possibility. "The more we put the troops into Afghanistan," said Pollack, "the more we are tempted to mount cross-border operations into Pakistan, exactly as we did in Vietnam."
Pollack cast doubt on the use of either drone bombing attacks or Special Operations commando raids into Pakistan as an approach to dealing with the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. "The only way to do it is to mount a full-scale counterinsurgency campaign," said Pollack, "which seems unlikely in the case of Pakistan."
The concern raised by Hammes and Pollack about the war in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan paralleled concerns in the U.S. intelligence community about the effect on Pakistan of commando raids by U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan against targets inside Pakistan. In mid-August 2008, the National Intelligence Council presented to the White House the consensus view of the intelligence community that such Special Forces raids, which were then under consideration, could threaten the unity of the Pakistani military if continued long enough, as IPS reported Sep. 9.
Despite that warning, a commando raid was carried out on a target in South Waziristan Sep. 3, reportedly killing as many as 20 people, mostly apparently civilians. A Pentagon official told Army Times reporter Sean D. Naylor that the raid was in response to cross-border activities by Taliban allies with the complicity of the Pakistani military's Frontier Corps.
Although that raid was supposed to be the beginning of a longer campaign, it was halted because of the virulence of the political backlash in Pakistan that followed, according to Naylor's Sep. 29 report. The raid represented "a strategic miscalculation," one U.S. official told Naylor. "We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response."
The Pakistani military sent a strong message to Washington by demonstrating that they were willing to close down U.S. supply routes through the Khyber Pass talking about shooting at U.S. helicopters.
The commando raids were put on hold for the time being, but the issue of resuming them was part of the Obama administration's policy review. That aspect of the review has not been revealed.
Meanwhile airstrikes by drone aircraft in Pakistan have sharply increased in recent months, increasingly targeting Pashtun allies of the Taliban.
Last week, apparently anticipating one result of the policy review, the New York Times reported Obama and his national security advisers were considering expanding the strikes by drone aircraft from the Tribal areas of Northwest Pakistan to Quetta, Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are known to be located.
But Daniel Byman, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism policy specialist at Georgetown University, who has been research director on the Middle East at the RAND corporation, told the Times that, if drone attacks were expanded as is now being contemplated, al Qaeda and other jihadist organisations might move "farther and farther into Pakistan, into cities".
Byman believes that would risk "weakening the government we want to bolster", which he says is "already to some degree a house of cards." The Times report suggested that some officials in the administration agree with Byman's assessment.
The drone strikes are admitted by U.S. officials to be so unpopular with the Pakistani public that no Pakistani government can afford to appear to tolerate them, the Times reported.
But such dissenting views as those voiced by Hammes, Pollack and Byman are unknown on Capital Hill. At a hearing on Afghanistan before a subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee Thursday, the four witnesses were all enthusiastic supporters of escalation, and the argument that U.S. troops must fight to prevent al Qaeda from getting a new sanctuary in Afghanistan never even came up for discussion.
17 Comments so far
Show AllI'm thinking about this: per unit cost of deployment to Afhanistan. That is, the average per diem cost to keep one soldier in the field there as opposed, for example, to keep that soldier in full training reserve back in the States in the eventuality that there was a genuine threat to the national security not just the possibility that some band of criminals was plotting to mount a hit-and-run raid on some major, largely symbolic infrastructure edifice back home.
This is, of course, a complex calculation, as Joe Stigliz showed in his book "The Three Trillion Dollar War". Many indirect costs such as lost income for widows and orphans, long term medical and disability expenses for the wounded, replacement costs for equipment lost and destroyed, even the drain of "kickbacks and bribes" normally involved in civilian support structures, don't usually figure into the calculations of the Pentagon or the CBO and, at least before our occupation of Iraq, are exceeddingly difficult to finger. Still, I don't think it would be impossible to arrive at a reasonable 'ball-park figure'.
The idea would be take take the figure so calculated, or rather the "savings" involved in the difference between the two figures and then calculate how much would then be available for other more useful purposes such as hiring teacher's aides and tutors for kids in the run-down school districts of our depressed urban areas, public health care initiatives, alternative energy development and other forms of direct economic "stimulus'. Or, if you prefer: money available for "tax breaks" and the purchase of "toxic" assets. I put those two items in quotes because its a little bit absurd to use the term break on an item that never existed in the first place, ditto with the assets.
It making this calculation in might be useful to include an assessment of what the per unit cost of deployment would be if the whole exercise were actually done properly. For example: if those minions of civilian advisors which the administration plans to deploy to assist the "corrupt and ineffective" government of President Karzai were actually trained to speak Pashtun or arrangements were made to recruit competant intelligence agents to operate on the ground in Afganistan. How much additional expense would be involved in restricting overly long deployments of individual soldiers and providing them useful assignments while they were back home? What if the U.S. and its allies actually provided the Karzai regime with sufficient funds for development to lend it even a modicuum of credibility, not to mention development the sort of de-centralized governing plan which is really appropriate for the region.
Furthermore, I'm sorry if this sounds bad tempered and faithless to "the cause", one could figure in what would be the cost in both time and money, of a truly effective opposition to the war itself. That is, instead of just blowing hard with general principles, fatuous prophesies, and affirmations of "counter-cultural" solidarity, anti-war protestors actually mobilized convincing arguments against the war.
When all these difficult and detailed calculations are completed, taking even the most conservative, "low-end' estimates, I suspect the savings would be immense. Perhaps not sufficient for complete "recovery" but, them again, recovery as generally percieved by the head honchos on Wall street and Capital Hill may not be an altogether salubrious state of affairs- at least in so far as ordinary Americans groaning under impositions of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sectors of the economy are concerned.
So 9/11 was just some "hit-and-run"? No, the threat is real. Destabilizing the already unstable Pakistan is part of the unintended consequences, but that's the fault of Al Quaeda, not the US. If a murder runs from the police and commits more crimes in the process, that doesn't make it the police's fault, nor does it mean that letting him go would reduce his violence. Those monsters need to be hunted down no matter where they go.
It's way past time for the USA to beat feet from overseas, repudiate interventionism/imperialism forever, and adopt a national grand strategy of defense of this country and this country ONLY (for which we'd require a mere fraction of the money we waste yearly in vain attempts to dominate the world militarily, and we wouldn't need a "Department of Homeland Security" -- what a crock!).
The US attacks on Pakistan are another violation of the UN Charter, and therefore another US War Crime.
Bin Laden is winning, his plan is going according to plan,...the USA is destroying itself.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
"We did not fully appreciate the vehemence of the Pakistani response." and
"The drone strikes are admitted by U.S. officials to be so unpopular with the Pakistani public that no Pakistani government can afford to appear to tolerate them, the Times reported."
These drones are dropping bombs. How could they possibly be popular with the Pakistani public?
Maybe some country can make some "strikes" over the u.s. with drones and then we can see how popular they are here.
President Obomba, it's time to bring the troops and the drones home -- all of them. Let's put the troops to work here fighting the country's real enemy -- the crumbling economy.
For a critical socialist perspective from WSWS:
Obama announces escalation of war in Afghanistan, Pakistan
By Alex Lantier
28 March 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/afgh-m28.shtml
President Barack Obama on Friday announced a major escalation of the US war in Afghanistan and its further extension into Pakistan.
...
The policy Obama announced represents a massive increase in military violence not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan. Significantly, Obama devoted the first half of his remarks to Pakistan, signaling that a major conclusion of his administration's strategic review is to expand the war more aggressively beyond the borders of Afghanistan.
...
The hundreds of thousands of people killed and the millions wounded and displaced by the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan give the lie to Obama's claim that terrorists are the most dangerous enemy of the Pakistani and Afghan people. In fact, the greatest threat to the Central Asian masses is the militarist clique in Washington that remains in power, unaffected by the transition from Bush to Obama. As for the American people, Obama and his handlers view its anti-war sentiments and democratic instincts with nothing but contempt.
...
Obama's announcement of wider war in Central Asia underscores the cynical and fraudulent character of his presidential campaign and the fundamental agreement, whatever their tactical differences, between the Democratic and Republican parties in support of the predatory aims of US imperialism around the world. Having presented himself as the agent of "change," Obama is now presiding over an expansion of imperialist aggression that will have incalculable consequences.
..."
Like Wanker Bush & Slick Willy before him, Obama Shamalama has become too sickening to look at or listen to. What a pathetic little jerk. War president, indeed.
It is about the oil pipelines through Afghanistan.
I, being repetitively redundant, will once again reiterate that the core issue is the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, aka 'War on Terror', 'Long War', and my own invention and therefore favorite, 'War against the supporters of the attackers of 9/11, and increasingly the supporters of the supporters of the attackers' (remember, the attack into Syria last year was aimed at 'foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda').
Again and again I state that our despicable and asinine Congress started this mess when they allowed Bush to wage war against enemies to be named later (and he named al-Qaeda and the Taliban).
Our stupid and cretinous Congress continues to refuse to deal with this mess that they created. The American public continues to expect any and all progress and hope to come from Mr. Obama alone.
Again and again I mention that in over seven years nobody yet has explained what our war goal means. I refer to the words of our ridiculously incompetent Congress, 'preventing future terrorism' by our enemies.
Nobody can explain how to prevent future behavior by groups and individuals - thus no victory can be envisioned.
America is stuck in a war against groups of people - thus national borders become meaningless. The President is stuck in a war that he cannot walk away from or he will be politically eviscerated. He certainly can't declare victory over al-Qaeda and have something blow up somewhere (which will immediately, if not sooner, be ascribed to al-Qaeda by O'Reilly and co.)
There is no victory, defeat cannot be allowed and therefore all that these strategic fossils can imagine is more of the same, as the Obama administration becomes LBJ II.
Yes, the energy routes, or the great new game of controlling pipelineistan. That, and war is sure good as hell for the "defense" industry.
Right, don't miss Pepe Escobar's TomDispatch piece on Pipelineistan, a la Brzezinksi's "grand chess game" of geo-politics and the Liquid War of Eurasia.
Who wants to make a bet that B. is the man behind the curtain of Obama's Afghan policy? http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175050/pepe_escobar_welcome_to_pipelineistan
There is no rationale for the war--except maybe to control the energy routes that run through and near Afghanistan.
President Obama’s stated rationale for sending more troops and providing additional aide to Afghanistan is that we're there to prevent Al Qaeda/Taliban from attacking the US. This rationale begins to wear thin after hearing it so many times over the years in regard to: Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, San Salvador etc.
Moreover, if we’re afraid of a terrorist attack on US soil from Afghanistan, we need to also consider possible attacks from any number of teetering-on–the-brink countries: Haiti, Somalia, Moldava, Mexico, etc. In this globalized age a Bin Laden can operate from anywhere and short of going to war with the entire world, we need a smarter strategy than invading and occupying.
Strangely, there’s never a mention energy (oil, gas) and Afghanistan in the same sentence. The country is strategically located atop major energy routes. In the past the Bush administration negotiated with the Taliban on delivery routes for these vital resources. Is this a current possibility?
I'm no expert but I can tell you the Obama plan of re- invading Afghanistan is DOA. Just ask the master of foreign armies dying in that country, Rudyard Kipling. The place is still part of the "Great Game"--countries near and far want a piece of the action--energy routes, geopolitical control. So India fights Pakistan (solve this one and the whole region will quiet down!), the Taliban/Pushtuns fight Russia, USA, Iran. The place needs a grand bargain--make it neutral like Switzerland, offer a little something to everyone.
No reason for being there except for what Curtis pointed out just before you.
I always thought that Afghanistan was another way to spell "Tar Baby".
Maybe we should just buy all the opium. Use the military to sequre the dope and ship it out the U.S. We could then set up opium dens for our inceasing number of unemployed to get stoned, using their unemployment checks. With lots of cheap dope supplied by our government, it would put a dent in the difficulties with South America and Mexico. This could really be a win win. The CIA are the people to run this program as they gained the expertize with Viet Nam and the Iran Contra drills.
Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden? If you have a chance to speak with Obama, maybe ask?
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Just ask the Afghan people! I heard on a video clip a women speaking from Kandahar. She was asking to please train the Afghan Police and Military, send material aid, food and medicines but please no more Military, they are destructive.
Now here is a novel thought, instead of O'Bummer sending 60,000 US GIs over there, why not bring 60,000 volunteer Afghan men and women to the USA, train them as an effective fighting and policing force and then return them to Afghanistan to fulfill the duties expected of them?
The UN could foot the bill, the MIC still gets billions, Afghanistan will then achieve stability with no occupation army, the pipelines can then be built and all NATO personnel could be de-mobbed.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Every concerned citizen should be doing all we can, whether it be letting your congresspeople know, or organizing demonstrations -- whatever -- we, the people (to use a phrase which resonates so well with anyone who has had a civics class) must force Obama and his ruling thugs to respond to our needs and wants -- we must let him know WE DON'T WANT THESE WARS AND WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THEM BEING FOUGHT IN OUR NAME!